Second Thoughts On the Dead Sea Scrolls: The First Book to Read About the Story, The Scrolls, And Their Significance

Copyright

PUBLISHER’S INTRODUCTION

The first edition of Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls was published in 1956, fewer than ten years after the discovery of the scrolls in 1947. The book was revised five years later. This is the 1964 edition.

Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls remains a valuable resource and the first book to read about the story, the scrolls, and their significance. Professor Bruce had a thorough understanding of the background of the scrolls as well as of the opinions and discussions of other scholars. What sets this book apart is his ability to tell an engaging story. His sketch of the political fortunes of Israel under the Persians, Greeks, and Romans in the Prologue; his story of the First Discoveries in chapter 1; and his account of the history and character of the Qumran community in chapter 10 all make for fascinating reading. I felt like I was discovering the scrolls myself, said one reviewer.

In the last fifty years there have been more discoveries, more research, more details, and more technological advances in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Through the Israel Museum (http://dss.collections.imj.org.il) and the Leon Levy Digital Library (http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il) many of the scrolls and fragments can be viewed online. But the fundamental discussions into the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for biblical studies and for the histories of Judaism and Christianity have not changed since Bruce presented his insights. He discusses the findings from eleven Qumran caves, for instance. The discovery of a twelfth cave was not announced until 2017 – 70 years after the first cave was discovered.

Devorah Dimant, author of Dead Sea Scrolls Handbook, calls Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls a very clear and balanced introduction to the discoveries and the range of interpretations to which they gave rise. Author and Bible translator Samuel H. Hooke called Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, excellent, sane, and wholly scholarly.

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This ebook edition of Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls is published under the Kingsley Books imprint of F.F. Bruce Copyright International.

When Robert Hicks, a British book publisher, realized that many of the works of F.F. Bruce were not readily available, he wanted to correct that situation. Of the nearly 60 books and hundreds of magazine articles written by the Dean of Evangelical Scholarship, Robert felt many of those not in print could be presented in a visually appealing way for the modern reader.

After receiving the support of F.F. Bruce’s daughter, Sheila Lukabyo, Robert enlisted the help of Larry Stone, an American publisher. Together they contacted nearly twenty of F.F. Bruce’s publishers. Some of Bruce’s books are being reformatted into printed booklets suitable for evangelism and Bible study in universities and in church groups. Many of Bruce’s printed books as well as collections of articles never before appearing in book form are being made available as reasonably-priced ebooks that can be easily distributed around the world.

The purpose of F.F. Bruce Copyright International is to encourage an understanding of Professor Bruce’s teaching on the Scripture, to encourage his spirit of humility in approaching the Bible, and encourage academic scholarship among today’s evangelical students and leaders.

For the latest information on the availability of ebooks and printed books by F.F. Bruce and his friends, see www.ffbruce.com.

PREFACE

SOME years ago I wrote a little book entitled The Dawn of Christianity (subsequently incorporated in a larger work entitled The Spreading Flame ). I cannot find in it any reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls. News of the Scrolls was slowly being released at the time when that book was being written, but at that time it did not seem likely that the new knowledge would make much of a contribution to the study of Christian origins.

Today the situation is quite different. In the eyes of many, the new discoveries have brought about a revolution in our understanding of Christian origins. Those who have appeared slow to admit this revolution have been reproved for their unseemly conservatism, which has been put down to religious inhibition. It is difficult, says one writer, for the clergyman scholar to face certain implications of the contents of the Dead Sea manuscripts. He himself, we are to assume, is eager only to follow truth wherever it may lead. But so, we may be sure, is the clergyman scholar whom he criticizes.

Whether the following pages are the work of a scholar is for others to judge. But it cannot be urged against them that they are the work of a clergyman. A lay teacher in a secular university will perhaps be allowed some freedom from those inhibitions which are alleged to beset his ordained colleagues—but one never knows. Yet this may be said at the outset. If The Dawn of Christianity were being written now, and not in 1950, it would no doubt be a much better book (for it would benefit by the added experience and, we hope, wisdom of the intervening years), and it would certainly contain copious references to the Dead Sea Scrolls. But the second thoughts induced by the Scrolls would affect only incidental features of the story. The main point of view would be defended all the more confidently and vigorously because of these new discoveries.

The title of this book, then, is not Second Thoughts on the Dawn of Christianity but Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls. For as more and more information comes to hand about these documents, earlier estimates of their significance have to be revised. Indeed, the word second in the title must be interpreted in a liberal sense. Some of the thoughts which find expression here are probably third, fourth or even fifth thoughts. But they are certainly not last thoughts.

Yet the outlines of the situation out of which these documents emerged are becoming increasingly clear; and unless some quite incalculable factor is suddenly introduced into the picture, it seems likely that further information, as it continues to be published, will modify a number of points here and there but in general will help to fill the outlines in and make them clearer rather than necessitate a radical reinterpretation.

I have tried to maintain a clear distinction between the new evidence itself and the inferences which I think should be drawn from it. I hope I have succeeded in this.

My grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr. David J. Ellis, who has provided the frontispiece and illustration for the dust wrapper, to Mr. David F. Payne, for the description of Masada quoted in chapter 5, and to my wife, for her help at every stage of the work.

September, 1956                           F.F. Bruce.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I have taken the opportunity afforded by this revision to expand the treatment of certain points in the light of more recent knowledge, and to amend various defects in the first edition. While I have changed my mind on a number of details, my judgment on the central issues remains unchanged, and therefore this new edition can properly appear under the same title as its predecessor, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

September, 1961                           F.F.B

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

Further reflection on the identity of the Wicked Priest, discussed in chapter 9, has now disposed me to think that the case for Jonathan, brother of Judas Maccabaeus, is stronger than that for Alexander Jannaeus. Apart from that, the past three years have brought about no serious modifications in the main positions maintained in this book.

June, 1964

PROLOGUE

WHEN the Persian king Cyrus brought the Babylonian Empire to an end in 539 B.C. , he authorized a body of Jewish displaced persons to return to their home in Judæa, from which they had been deported by Nebuchadrezzar two generations previously, and to rebuild their national shrine in Jerusalem. After some years the temple was rebuilt, and its services were carried out anew by the members of the old priestly families, at whose head stood Jeshua, a scion of the house of Zadok, which had occupied the chief priesthood in the former temple since its dedication by King Solomon about 960 B.C. down to its destruction by the Babylonians in 587. But, while the ancient chief-priestly family was restored to its sacred office, the royal house of David, which also returned from exile, was not restored to the kingship.

The new Jewish community was organized as a temple-state, consisting of Jerusalem and a few miles around. At the head of the state was the high priest, who controlled internal Jewish affairs; the wider interests of the Persian Empire were the responsibility of the civil governor of Judæa, who was appointed by the crown. When, after two hundred years, the Persian Empire was in its turn brought to an end by Alexander the Great, no material change took place in the Jewish constitution. They had a Macedonian governor over them instead of one appointed by the Persian king; they had to pay taxes to a Macedonian court instead of to the Persian court; they were exposed to the powerful influence of Hellenistic culture. But the high priests of the house of Zadok remained as before at the head of the Jewish temple-state.

So matters continued under the domination of the Ptolemies, who inherited Alexander’s empire in Egypt, and retained Palestine under their control until 198 B.C. When in that year they lost Palestine to the rival dynasty of the Seleucids who had succeeded to Alexander’s heritage in the greater part of Asia, the transition was smooth so far as Judæa was concerned. The increasing tendency to follow western ways did indeed cause grave concern to the more conservatively-minded Jews, but they had no complaint against the Gentile government, which guaranteed the temple constitution and granted the utmost liberty in the practice of the Jewish religion.

For a variety of reasons a change came about with the accession of Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) to the Seleucid throne in 175 B.C. Early in his reign he interfered with the Zadokite succession to the high priesthood; later he tried to prohibit the Jewish religion altogether. This led to a national and religious uprising, as a result of which Judæa ultimately secured complete political independence. The leaders of this uprising, the priestly family of the Hasmoneans, became the ruling dynasty in the independent state, and assumed the high priesthood in addition to the chief civil and military power. From 142 to 63 B.C. the Jews preserved their hard-won independence under the Hasmoneans, but in the latter year they lost it to the Romans, who reorganized all the territory west of the Euphrates as part of their empire. But the Romans left a Hasmonean high priest in charge of the internal affairs of Judæa for over twenty years. In 40 B.C., however, the political situation in western Asia caused them to nominate one Herod as king of the Jews, and Herod ruled Palestine from 37 to 4 B.C. in the interests of Rome. His son Archelaus, who succeeded him in Judæa, was deposed by the Roman Emperor in A.D. 6, and for the next sixty years Judæa was governed by procurators appointed by the Emperor, except for three years (A.D. 41-44) when a grandson of Herod, Agrippa I, reigned over Judæa as king. From the beginning of Herod’s reign the high priests, who were henceforth appointed by Herod and his descendants, or else by Roman governors, counted for less and less, although by virtue of their office they continued to preside over the Sanhédrin, the supreme court of the Jewish nation.

Misrule by Roman procurators, combined with an increasing intolerance of Gentile control on the part of Jewish nationalists, led to the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66 and the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Roman forces in A.D. 70. With the fall of the temple, the last vestiges of the temple constitution, together with the high-priestly office, came to an end. Judæa was placed under firmer military control than before. But in A.D. 132 a new revolt broke out, and the independence of Judæa was proclaimed under a messianic claimant who is commonly known as Bar-Kokhba. After three years of guerrilla fighting this rising was crushed. Jerusalem was rebuilt by the Romans as a completely Gentile city, and a new chapter opened in the history of the Holy Land.

This sketch of Israel’s political fortunes under the Persians, Greeks and Romans may provide a framework within which we may get our bearings more easily when we consider the situation which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.

CHAPTER 1

THE FIRST DISCOVERIES

What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS are manuscripts which have come to light from time to time since the spring of 1947 in a number of areas lying northwest of the Dead Sea. But while we concentrate our attention on these recent discoveries—exciting and important as they are—it is worth remembering that other finds of a similar nature have been made in the same region at much earlier times. We shall have occasion to say something about these earlier discoveries later on, ¹ but the discoveries of our own day began by accident when a goatherd of the Bedouin tribe of Ta’amireh, Muhammad adh-Dhib (Muhammad the Wolf) by name, was grazing a herd of goats in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, and in a cave near the Wadi Qumran came upon a long-forgotten storehouse of Hebrew and Aramaic documents. Accounts of his adventure differ in detail, but this is how it was described in The Times of August 9, 1949, by Mr. G. Lankester Harding, at that time Director of Antiquities in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: